The NBA regular season got underway two weeks ago, tipping off eight days earlier than it did last season and 13 days earlier than it had just five years ago. In 2005, sports fans enjoyed a full five-day breather between the World Series and basketball’s opening night. This year, the NBA season debuted on the very same night as Game 3 of the NLCS and Game 4 of the ALCS. Fans of both sports could have tuned in from 5pm ET Tuesday (the first pitch of Astros-Yankees) to 1:30am ET Wednesday (the end of Rockets-Warriors).

While 8.5 hours on the couch is a little unhealthy, the NBA’s reasons for the early start are good – for the first time in 72 years, there will be no four-game-in-five-day stretches, and for the fourth year in a row, the NBA All-Star Break will be a week long. But due in part to that early tip, I’m coming to you a little later than I hoped with a 16-year look at NBA offseason movement, Vegas win projections, and teams’ over- and underperformance relative to those projections. (I’ll run an updated version of this every summer.)

Here are the questions we’ll look at – each via tables, graphics, and words on the pages to follow:

Which franchises typically outperform (win more games than) their Vegas projections and which under-perform? By how many games? In other words, which NBA franchises are the most under- and overrated?

Coming Soon: The Biggest Improvements (Projected and Actual) and "Overs"

Where do the 2017 Timberwolves and 76ers rank? How about Miami’s Big Three and LeBron-Cavs II?

Coming Soon: The Worst Declines (Projected and Actual) and "Unders"

Where do the 2017 Bulls, Hawks, Jazz, and Pacers rank? How about the post-LeBron Cavs in 2010-11?

I’ll be reviewing all of this back to the 2002 offseason. Actual win totals are easy to find, of course, but Vegas win projections (over-unders) – which help quantify what the market thinks of an NBA team’s offseason and its prospects for the upcoming season – are a little tougher to track down. SportsOddsHistory.com has Vegas win projections back to 2002-2003 (via various sportsbooks), and that's what I went with here.

Two quick wrinkles to be aware of. First, the 2004-2005 Vegas win projections are missing info for ten NBA teams. They’re excluded for now until I can track them down. Second, the 2011-2012 NBA season was 66 games long rather than the standard 82. For purposes of this analysis, Vegas win total projections and actual win totals for that season are evaluated and presented on 82-game equivalent basis.